By K.D. Norris
Godfrey-Lee Public Schools inducted four into its Hall of Fame earlier this month, two individuals who made an impact in the classroom, one on the basketball court and in the community, and a series of cross country teams worthy of the name “Team of the Decade”.
The induction ceremony took place prior to a varsity boys basketball game on Jan. 12 at Lee High School, but as is the custom at the district, the inductees were not only athletes and athletic teams.
The team honored with entry to the Hall of Fame honor was actually not a single team, but a series of cross county teams — The Team of the Decade of the 1970s, as it is often called.
While the teams and team members were honored, it was their coach, Art Kraai, himself a member of the Hall of Fame, who accepted the award. Coach Kraai read off a long list of accomplishments for the Long Blue Line in dominate cross county seasons from 1971 to 1982, including the boys winning four state titles and the girls winning one — noting that it wasn’t until late in the run that girls even had state competitions.
One thing that unified all the teams, was the coach’s rallying cry, which he repeated as he closed his remarks: “Back in my day, we would say, ‘Coach, coach, open the door and let those Rebels on the floor’.”
First up of the individuals on the honor roll was Douglas Greenwold, who was a star Rebel in the class room and on the basketball team — being named valedictorian leading the Rebels to the 1960 state finals — and then went on to play on University of Michigan’s first Final Four team in 1964. He earned his bachelors and two masters degrees at U-M, and went on to a long career in business and a continuing career in religious studies, including as an author and a teacher.
The next honoree was James D. Skidmore, who brought a passion for teaching and head for accounting to Lee high school. Skidmore earned a bachelors degree from Ferris Institute and a masters from Michigan State University before joining the Lee staff in 1958. As a Rebel, he not only taught bookkeeping and accounting but also was faculty advisor for the Echo yearbook, Arial student newspaper and the National Honor Society. His late wife, Sally, was also a teacher at Lee. Skidmore went on to a long and distinguished teaching career at Grand Rapids Community College before retiring in 1999. But you know that they say: once a Rebel, always a Rebel.
The final individual honored was Patricia Camp Bartlett. Since the early 1960s, she has been involved with the high school and the school district in literally all levels. She attended Lee, graduating in 1965, with four years in the band and four years in the Future Teachers of American group — a harbinger of a career to come. After getting her bachelors degree from Michigan State, she returned to Lee as a teacher in 1969, later earned a masters degree, and went ton to spend 37 years in district classrooms. In 1990, she was a state finalist for Michigan Teacher of the Year. After retiring in 2005, she remains active in the school district including as part of the Feeding America food distribution program at Lee high and currently serving on the Godfrey-Lee Education Foundation Board of Directors.
